Why One Might Hesitate When Googling Oneself

So, every so often I type google.com into my browser, and enter my given name and the title of the published novel in the search field. I learn interesting things that way sometimes, sometimes things that the publicity department at R*verhead should already have known, like that the Rocky Mountain News thought the book was swell.

Well, last night I did that and I came across this on some woman's blog:

And then, sometimes, I get home and start reading said proudly chosen book and grimace when I get about half-way through the text, when I realize that I'm reading the second book (behind Alcott's Little Women) I've ever been able to classify as "bad." Times when I understand that book stores, although ripe with the quantity, aren't always overflowing with the quality, and that certain texts within those aforementioned potentially adventure-laden aisles (like say, William Norris' Snapshots, for example) can be disasters in prose just waiting to be read.

And I feel a little vexed about it for a while until I explore her page a little more and find a poem she's authored. Which if I was petty, I'd post here.

Hell who am I kidding? I am petty. But not petty enough to make you read it, so I'll just give you the title: "I Tried To Fix You, Shattered As I Was." And say that every so often I read a poem that makes me think Anne Sexton should say she's sorry for what she's done.

New York State of Mind

I'm heading north for a visit:

My travel dates:

From Austin, TX (AUS) to New York NY (JFK)
Monday, 12 Jun 06
Flight 1060
Depart Austin, TX (AUS) at 7:00 am and arrive in New York NY (JFK) at 11:40 am

From New York NY (JFK) to Austin, TX (AUS)
Tuesday, 20 Jun 06
Flight 1061
Depart New York NY (JFK) at 7:55 am and arrive in Austin, TX (AUS) at 11:15 am

Hope to see y'all...

Average Homeboy Redux

The other day, I wrote a brief entry concerning my fascination with a hideous "hip-hop" video demo that some deluded soul made in apparent seriousness, only to have it circulate on the web as an instrument of mockery.

We here at Notes From a Former New Yorker enjoy that sort of thing.

In any case, for those of you who don't read all the comments on my posts, you may have missed this gem:

Anonymous said...

Attention!!
D. Blaze himself, from "Average Homeboy" fame, is a personal acquaintence (sic) of mine and will be engaging in phone interview with me on 90.9 FM, WCDB, This Friday April 24, around 9:30. If you live outside of Albany NY, you can stream us easily if you have Windows media player. HTTP://WCDB.ALBANY.EDU !!! TUNE IN! and spread the word, please!! I am not pulling your leg and I promise this will be worth a listen!!
-Leon (DJ Kitchen)-

Now, I assume Leon (DJ Kitchen) means Friday the 29th, seeing as yesterday was the 24th. And I don't know if the 9:30 is AM or PM, and everyone probably has better things to do, but, if you don't, well, you might want to stream the D. Blaze interview and tell me about it.

Because I think I'd enjoy that too.

Hey Pretty Baby Get High With Me/We Can Go To My Sister's If We Say We'll Watch the Baby

Last night, Olga and I went to see The Voice at a local club. Previously, I've mentioned how absofreakingly fabulous I find her new record. Live, she's something else.

I first discovered Neko Case during a time of great transition in my life. There's something about her songs, with their total disregard for the traditional pop construction of verse-chorus-verse, her fondness for exquisitely expressed darkness and that Voice. You can't put her sound in a box. She gets called alt.country and "Americana", and those genre labels have expanded so far from what they once were that I suppose they fit.

But they're too reductive. Maybe "Torch and Twang" is more apt, or perhaps "Gothic Country," or even "Flannery O'Connor Under the Influence of Sonic Youth," but the simple fact is that she's making music like no one else out there right now. It is beautiful, it is heartbreaking, it is beyond my ability to describe. It must be heard.

And it's all about The Voice. It's unexpected, when you first lay eyes on her, the sound she can produce, because it sounds like it should be coming from a scratchy 78 record, like it's purity should be diluted by analog recording and the limitations of old speakers. Live, it is almost too much, too lush, it rises and falls and settles in your bones like a bourbon drunk brought on by heartbreak.

I realize that I am gushing, but I mean this in all sincerity. This is a once in a lifetime voice, something you should make every effort to hear in person. It is legendary; it is Billie before the drink and smoke and smack, Ella before age. I suspect she’s at her peak now. That her songwriting has matched the power of the voice. I’m afraid that the purity will slowly falter in the coming years, that time and touring and life will change and roughen her delivery. She will still be wonderful, but she will be different.

This tour is over now. But when she comes through your town, just go. You owe it to yourself.

Average Homeboy

This is wrong on so many levels. But I can't look away.

A Modest Proposal

I don't know Wisdom Weasel. But, despite being a Red Sox fan, he seems like a decent sort, fond of drink and the two sports, Baseball and Soccer, that matter most. I'm even willing to forgive his Red Sox fandom, as he's English and can not be expected to know better, having fallen for a New England lass who has clearly brainwashed him in matters regarding America's National Past Time.

We've become blog acquainted through our mutual friend Ms. Bri, and that's reason enough for me to assume we'd get along should we ever find ourselves in the same place.

However, on May 1, my beloved New York Yankees will be traveling to the heart of Red Sox Nation for the first time this year. It is a dark place, full of men who fight while wearing masks and others who take their aggression out on very old men, but I fully expect the Yankees to come away victorious despite their uneven start to this year's season.

So, I propose some sort of bet, to be played out here and in his own pages. Not anything of monetary consequence, as I am poor and he's soon to be betrothed, but rather something visual, to be blogged, a picture perhaps, of Wisdom sporting an "I Heart Jeter" shirt should the Yankees win the series and something equally mortifying to me in these pages should the unthinkable happen and the Red Sox win.

Then, as the season progresses, we can continue this, in the spirit of good natured ribbing and mutual mortification.

I'm willing to take suggestions on the terms, keeping in mind that the embarrassing gesture need be: a) cheap, b) easily blogged and c) funny.

What say you Weasel?

Departures

In about an hour, S. will get on plane, headed for Alaska, her home. She's not sure if she's coming back--I'd tend to doubt it, knowing her as I do--and my feelings are mixed, though I keep coming back to just being sad.

Our history is complicated, there have been huge chunks of time when I wasn't even sure that I liked her, being around her often makes me unahppy.

But she's also a real friend, someone who would come to my aid if I needed her, and I'm pretty sure I won't ever being seeing her again.

She's young, she's searching for something elusive, something she's tried to find through moving from place to place, from person to person. What she's trying to find is inside herself, but she doesn't know that yet and no one can explain it to her until she realizes it herself.

But I know that I'm going to miss her, despite, or perhaps because of, everything.

Fare thee well, Sara. May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind always be at your back.

Fun Facts About Your Birthday

via Wisdom Weasel

"Go to Wikipedia. Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death."

June 15

Events:

763 BC - Assyrians record a solar eclipse that will be used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.

1752 - Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity.

1954 - UEFA (the Union des Associations Européennes de Football) is formed in Basle, Switzerland.

Birthdays:

1932 - Mario Cuomo, Governor of New York

1943 - Xaviera Hollander, Dutch author (I share a birthday with the Happy Hooker!)

1972 - Andy Pettitte, baseball player (Come back Andy. We were born on the same day, in the same year! We miss you.)

Death:

1996 - Ella Fitzgerald, American singer (b. 1917)

I'm Just Saying

Go to Google and type "failure" into the search field and click "I'm Feeling Lucky."

Real American Patriotism

For a couple of weeks, I've started to write about the current immigration battle being waged in Congress and, more importantly, on the streets. Each time, I've come up against a wall of cliché that has stymied my efforts. What can I say, as a liberal, white man, that hasn't already been said? The world doesn't need another rambling treatise on how America is a nation of immigrants, blah, blah, blah.

Still, H.R. 4437, the spark that ignited these protests, is an obvious and reprehensible piece of race baiting in an election year and perhaps the worst piece of political calculation that the Republican Party has made in years.



In the 2004 election, the Bush/Cheney ticket received forty-four percent of the Latino vote, an increase of nine percent from their totals in 2000. The reasons behind the swing away from Democrats are complex and could be the subject of a long post, but a quick look at the streets is enough to show that those gains--and then some--are marching right out of the Republican column. Of course, the Democratic Party establishment, long used to African American and (to a lesser extent) Latino voters toeing the party line, needs to pull its head out of its rectum and actually create policy initiatives that are in line with the values and the rhetoric of the Party.

Because here's what I'm seeing:











I'm seeing a group of people, too long marginalized by the power structures in this country, gaining a sense of their own power, seeing the strength of their numbers. I'm seeing faces that are barely into adolescence beside faces that have weathered a lifetime of discrimination. I'm seeing anger, yes, but also pride and hope and determination.

Most importantly, I'm seeing a generation of new voters, these high school and middle school students, leaving their schools en masse and making their voices heard. How many of these teenagers will turn 18 before the 2008 election? How many of them will remain energized and active? I'd wager it will be a fair number. Because this isn't just politics. This is personal. It is about their friends and their families, their mothers and their fathers, their aunts and uncles and cousins and brothers and sisters. It is a movement that is starting to coalesce into something this country hasn't seen in thirty years.

It's a movement still searching for a leader, for a face, for its Dr. King or its Malcolm X, but H.R. 4437 has pried the lid off and it's not going back on.

In Which Wes' Head Explodes With Envy

At an hour of Saturday morning I usually associate with deep REM sleep, The Hon. A and I headed out to The 8th Annual Mighty Texas Dog Walk.



This is a benefit for the Texas Hearing and Service Dogs, and some kind of World Record thing, but mostly it's an excuse for a bunch of liberals to feel good about themselves while enjoying an amusing walk with thousands of canine friends and raising dough for a good cause.

So, as both the Hon. A and I are good liberals, we loaded Lucy and Otis into the back of the Hon. A's Volvo (after a minor snafu that may have been about me not being awake on time) and headed out.



Upon arrival, the Hon. A needed a potty break before joining the walk. Otis was convinced he knew where she'd gone.



Once moving, I noticed that the organizers had thoughtfully set out watering stations for the contestants.





In an eqaul display of foresight, they provided doggy porta potties.



While Otis found a paper to carry, Lucy preferred to carry her own leash.





All in all, it was a fun morning, spent with a good friend in beautiful weather. Lucy and Otis seemed to enjoy it as well.



Heck, even Scooby and those meddling kids were there.

The Gray Lady's Make Over

Good God, I hate the new look of the Times website.

I waited a week to bitch about it, but it's driving me crazy. The New York Times, for me, is something of a fetish. It's my paper. When I lived in London, I always bought the Sunday edition, at a price that now boggles my mind, and read it while doing my laundry. Even then, when I knew The Guardian was a better paper and was delighted to have it every day, The Times held a special place in my heart and head. If I were trapped on a desert island, I'd want a subscription.

During my last two years in New York, I read two papers every day. I'd start with one of the tabloids for the sports--usually The News because I like Lupica--and then move on to my beloved, finger smearing Times. There is little more satisfying than a morning spent with a greasy breakfast, a constantly refilled cup of questionable coffee, and the surety that someplace in that broadsheet you're going to read something interesting about something you didn't know you should even care about.

It's no trouble to get it here. I know of two places an easy walk from my house that carry it, but it's a skimpy Times, the inner sections pruned of just the content I'm looking for.

So, except for Sunday, I've become a devotee of the Times Online. The internet edition lacks the foldability I treasure (and the recent Times Select bullshit that has kept me from my favorite columnists grates), but it served my needs.

One of the things I liked was that the design of the website felt like the paper. The fonts, the look, were correct and it felt like it had some heft.

Now, not so much. It’s all sleek and full of video links and streamlined pages that, I suppose, were designed at great cost to aid readability. But it’s just making me grumpy. The Times is supposed to be staid. It’s supposed to be unwieldy. You have to learn how to fold that sucker on a crowded morning subway car and the paper of record should have a website that doesn’t bring to mind words like “airy.”

Happy, Mostly

Despite the fact that I miss home everyday and I miss people everyday and that Bri won't come visit because of some flying rodents, there's a lot that's good for me right now.

It's odd, really, to consider that light up ahead and not be certain it's the headlight of an oncoming train.

Cheney's Got A Gun

This is easily the best use of an Aerosmith song since that time in 9th Grade when I put "Sweet Emotion" on a mix tape in a bid to unhook a reluctant bra.

What did our leader do?/Who'd he put a bullet through...His buddy had it coming/cause when Cheney's got a gun/he's not so good at taking aim

Get Me Commissioner Gordon

In other cities (and I use that word loosely when discussing Austin), tourists gather to photograph monuments. What vacation in Paris would be complete without that shot of La Tour Eiffel? What hard hearted visitor to New York wouldn't snap a shot or two of The Statue of Liberty? How could you leave L.A. without the requisite shot of Paris Hilton's nether regions?

Here, though, tourists gather each night at dusk on the Congress Street Bridge.



Those with greater means hire a boat to take them out on Town Lake (aka The Colorado River).



Their purpose? To view bats. Austin is the summer home to the nation's largest urban colony of bats--in this case, they're of the Mexican Free Tailed variety.

As darkness falls, up to 1.5 million bats take flight on their nightly quest for grub. They're okay by me, as they consume between 10,000 and 30,000 pounds of bugs each night.

I want to get some good bat shots this summer, and I will, but for now, here's a taste:



Unlike the folks on the boats, I don't have the luxury of a red light wielding bat whisperer,



But I'm thinking a tripod and a spot under the bridge just might work out for me.

Ding, Dong, The Witch is Dead

DeLay Quits House; Abandons Campaign for Re-Election

UPDATE: Kos has the suspected Rovian Reason for the move: If he changes his legal residence to his Virginia condo, he's disqualified and can be replaced on the ballot.

The big bully saw the writing on the wall, took his ball and went home, the way bullies often do.

Play Ball

To my knowledge, George Will has written exactly two sentences that I agree with:

"There are two seasons. The baseball
season and the void after."

A bit past nine o'clock my time tomorrow night, Johnny Damon will step into the box to look at Barry Zito's first pitch of the year. I'll be, if I can find someone showing ESPN2, watching the game. If not, I'll be listening on my laptop at home.

I struggle to explain my fascination with baseball to those who aren't fans. The season is long, the games can last forever, the action can't be described as non-stop.

But I think that it's the fiction writer's sport, the one most concerned with plot and narrative. With the unlikely character coming up big. The one where so much builds slowly, over the course of a season, where we see things emerge as themes and motifs, each game a paragraph, each series a chapter of a larger novel.

It’s also the game I spent the most time playing as a child. Not as an organized sport. I played far more soccer than baseball that way.

But in someone’s backyard, with a wiffle ball bat taped with electrical tape and an old tennis ball, a father’s garden serving as the center field bleachers, we filled hours of summer afternoons, aping our favorites as seen in those pre-cable days on Saturday morning’s This Week in Baseball. When I came set from the stretch, pitching to Chip, in my mind I was Guidry or Tiant or Spraky Lyle. When I hit from the left side, my stance was Donnie Baseball’s.

At night, lying in bed, I drifted off to sleep to Scooter and Bill White calling the late innings, usually dreaming by the time Goose closed the game out. Those were long, lean years for a child Yankee fan. But each year, at this time, when they still played a host of day games, when I didn’t know about ‘roids and you could watch every game on free television, Opening Day was a reminder that summer vacation was nearing, that lazy afternoons were waiting, that there were months to be spent in the rhythm of a nine inning game, of the 6-4-3 double play, of a back handed grab in the hole, of a double in the gap and a full count, two out pitch with the game on the line.

Tomorrow night, at some point, Zito will come set, and drop that beautiful twelve to six curve ball in for a called strike three and even though he’s sat down one of my guys looking, I’ll marvel, “Great pitch.”

Hey Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?

The Hon. A (seen here in a photo taken just days before both the restraining order and the cease and desist letters were issued),will soon be taking part in the Hill Country Ride for AIDS. For those of you who would prefer not to click:

Ten AIDS service organizations came together in 1999 to create a cycling event to raise money to support people living with AIDS. In the Spring of 2000, the first Hill Country Ride for AIDS was a success, not only for the money it raised, but also for the community spirit that quickly made it a favorite event in Central Texas.

Many of these AIDS service organizations had been involved with the nationally produced Texas AIDS Ride in 1997. While it was a logistical success, the Austin agencies were disappointed that only 15% of the money raised was returned by the Ride organizers to the service organizations. The Austin agencies knew that they could create an event that raises money, captures our incredible community spirit, is fun, safe, and still return the money to support people living with AIDS.

By word of mouth, our riders have more than quadrupled from our first year. The Hill Country Ride for AIDS 2005 had a record number of riders who raised a record $452,000. The Wise Giving Alliance, a program of the Better Business Bureau states that events should “return at least 60% of money raised for program activities.” The Hill Country Ride for AIDS returned an average of 75%. With your support, we hope to return even more in 2006.

The Hill Country Ride for AIDS has quickly grown to be one of the most loved events of the year. A Hill Country Rider summed it up for many when he said “The fellowship and commitment to the cause is so strong on this Ride, and the money goes where it belongs. I am so proud! I’ll be back.” The Hill Country Ride for AIDS is for all levels.The spirit permeating the event is that it’s a ride, not a race. Everyone is welcome, and when asked why they ride, some will say it’s about riding to honor a loved one, some will say it’s about a physical challenge and achieving more than they ever thought they could, for some it’s about trying to do something really big in our effort to help people living with AIDS. Everyone will say it’s an incredible weekend of a community coming together to show that when we care, nothing can stand in our way.

There are more people than ever living with AIDS. They need our love and support. By being a part of the Hill Country Ride for AIDS, we not only show our neighbors living with AIDS that we are with them, we are also doing something big to provide critical services for our neighbors and friends who need us.

Beneficiaries: AIDS Services of Austin; ALLGO’s Informe - SIDA project; The Community AIDS Resources and Education (CARE) program; Community Action, Inc. Rural AIDS Services Project; Friends of David Powell Health Center; Interfaith Care Alliance; Out Youth Austin; Project Transitions; Waterloo Counseling Center; Wright House Wellness Center

She needs sponsors. I asked her the other night what someone might give to sponsor, and she said, $100. I don't have a spare $100 at the moment, but I do have a spare $25. If my tens of regular readers each want to chip in a few bucks, I'll do a Notes From A New Yorker sponsorship.

Leave a comment here if you’re interested. I want to make clear she doesn’t know I’m doing this (and that I'll be in trouble for either, A)Posting a photo, even blurred or B)posting that photo with blurring). But I’m asking people who read this to remember that this is Texas and state funding for social services of any stripe is worse here than it is just about anyplace else in this great nation. And that when that funding is doled out, AIDS organizations aren’t exactly high on the priorities list.

These people ride their bikes a stupid far distance. And sleep on the ground. They’re insane. But they’ve got good hearts. And, come on, she leads Team Soup Peddlar, fronting a company that got its start delivering soup on bikes. That's a cool company. And the soup's good.

This whole bike thing gets done at a very early hour of the morning, but I’ll try to get up and take pictures. And, unlike the time I cheered on the New York Marathon runners, I won’t be drinking a Bloody Mary and smoking.

Well, I won’t be smoking.

(note, if you'd rather donate directly, you can do so from this page to the Hon. A or from this page to Team Soup Peddler.